DRM-free music for your mobile phone and MP3 players sounds a good idea but not when an announcement is rushed out by SanDisk eager to to push up Samsung's bid price.
The SanDisk slotMusic announcement is a 1GB, fingernail-size, microSD-format card preloaded with DRM-free music from one of four music companies. It should be …

COMMENTS

Solution looking for a problem

Why would anyone want to go back to the use of physical media? With the likes of 7digital offering DRM free downloads, and CDs still being around, I don't see the point.

I also don't get the idea of slotting them into phones etc. Why carry arround a card per album and have to swap them out, when you can just put everything on one much larger card and stick it in your music phone?

argh

Said earlier today elsewhere already:

Tell you what, even if these held lossless files, I'd still buy CDs/Hybrid SACDs, rip them to ALAC and maybe maybe then I might convert some tracks to 160kbps - or maybe just snippets from songs for ringtones - to theoretically put on the 2GB microSD in my phone. And why? Because a) microSD is darn inconvenient compared to CD and b) those lossless files would also be DRMd to no end.

I second the earlier comment stating that this is quite identical to Sony's attempts to sell pre-recorded Minidiscs. A dead end product that gives consumers something they can only use in a very limited environment and that will be of lesser quality yet likely higher price than what it tries to be an alternative to, CDDA in this case. It also completely ignores that the number of people who do know what microSD is, how to put it in their phone and then access music on it, yet are totally lost when it comes to actually getting music on microSD themselves should be rather... limited.

I want a job where I get six figures+ to think up such pointless crap, I really do.

Actually they might be on to something

Actually I think it's quite a good idea. The people who thought it up will lose money, anyone who buys it will go grrr and learn not to do it again and version 2, swept along on a wave of nostalgia and hot sales of the microSD version of Now that's what I call music volumes 5&6, will probably include some form of high speed dubbing. I like it already!